Kanye West cancels tour dates to focus on finishing new album

Bad news, Australian fans of rappers who like to rant atop digital mountains: You’ll have to wait until September to bask in the glory of Kanye West’s Yeezus tour. But the good news is he’s taking that time to finish a new album, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Live Nation, the promoter of the Yeezus Tour, released the follwoing statement: “Due to unexpected timing requirements to finish his highly anticipated new studio album, scheduled for a 2014 release, Kanye West regretfully announces the postponement of his upcoming tour dates in Australia.” As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, West was due to perform half a dozen shows in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane, but has now bumped those dates to September.

What will be on the new album? West has regularly hinted that another installment of his Watch the Throne collaboration with Jay Z was imminent. (The two performed at last month’s South By Southwest Festival, though there was no new material in that set list.) And he hasn’t been gone from the recording game all that long; Yeezus hit the streets only last summer. The album topped multiple year-end critics’ lists, and has sold approximately 650,000 copies in the U.S. to date.